|
|
|
|
|
|
The Cardiff Morris - Y Morys Caerdydd Ale Fri 28/11/25 We met up with old friends at the Cardiff Morris Ale last night, which was hosted in Penarth. Apart from Cardiff & ourselves, there were sides from Carreg Las Morris, Full Moon Morris, ISCA, & White Hart. The two barrels of ale were very good indeed and ensured no one dehydrated. The curries supplied by a local Indian restaurant were plentiful and simply superb, and there was tons of cheese for dessert! Following the meal, various people sang songs with Cardiff’s Morwen & Tamar singing The Cuckoo’s Nest and our own Squire Ben performing The Pirate Song, and Jonathan Baker doing an incredible sea shanty featuring lyrics about the evolution of the Internet, complete with the sound effects of dial up modems! One of the joys of the Cardiff Ale is the Tombola, and this year’s certainly delivered some ‘interesting’ items that will potentially help address people’s problems on what to give family & loved ones for Christmas, although in my own case the tin of Spam I won might prove difficult to pass on! We performed Rigs of Doom, Bampton as our show dance, and fairly got stuck into the massed dancing, doing long forgotten gems like Queen’s Delight Bucknell, William & Nancy Bledington and Trunkles from Wheatley, amongst the usual, familiar dances from, Bampton, and Lichfield. Most from the side drove back to Swansea, although Keith, Jonathan Baker & Paul opted for sleep deprivation by staying at the local Scout hut! Those who attended were, musoes Sian, Kevin & Roger, dancers Alison B, Alison H, Alex, Ben, Claire, Di, Jonathan, Keith, Margaret, Nigel, Paul & Zep. A really great evening, which was very well hosted by our good pals from Cardiff!
0 Comments
Sweyn’s Ey Taster Evening. Well that was good! We held our Taster evening last night and saw five new people eager to learn what we do. Out of the 5 who came along, four people (Rebecca, Steph, Al, and Chris) have returned for subsequent practices and we picked up Louis recently who is already a dancer, coming from a Swiss Morris side! Here’s a few pics from last night of a very busy practice hall of lots of folk having fun! Things are looking great. Gower Heritage Centre- Cider Making for Our 60th Anniversary Weekend in 2026 It’s always a complete delight to dance at the Gower Heritage Centre, however this year we have been in such demand that nearly every request made we’ve had to turn down, already having something else in the diary. But on Saturday we made a Very Special Exception and piled down to The Mill for a spot of dancing – and cider making! Sweyn’s Ey is unbelievably excited to be celebrating their 60th birthday next year – yes that’s right, the side has been going for sixty whole years (who’d have thunk it) – and the fantastic Mr Richie Saunders has agreed to make a special cider on our behalf, to drink on the Big Day. This last week saw various members of the side swinging by the Heritage Centre at different times to drop off their contribution of apples for the cause, which were washed on Friday and pre-chopped ready for the pressing on Saturday. Each of us that wanted to then donned a heavy-duty apron and scary-looking gloves, and had a go at filling a ‘cheese’ with pulp. Lowen, my son, got to press the magic button that started the squeezing of the press, whilst we all stood by and watched the lovely fresh juice pouring out. Some of us glugged a bit of it immediately, whilst others grabbed a pint (or three..) of last year’s vintage from the Heritage Centre shop. At some point we even got to do some dancing! With the brook coming up higher and higher at a rate of knots in response to the heavy rain that fell all morning, we danced under cover in the main courtyard with an engaged and fun bunch of visitors and locals. We even got a few people up for our standard ‘volunteer’ dance (Brighton Camp, Adderbury), and there were fun tunes played by some of our musos in the break. I’ll leave it to someone else to list the rest of the dances we did, as the time flew by and I cannot remember a thing! Massive thanks to Richie and all at the Gower Heritage Centre for hosting us, making us cider and generally just being fabulous cheerleaders for Sweyn’s Ey. We really appreciate all support keeping this traditional practice alive, and we were particularly grateful to Sylvie who kept bringing out batch after batch of homemade Welsh cakes throughout. They certainly gave us energy to keep on jumpin’. Yum. Look out for our Birthday Bash weekend in early June next year, as we’ll be dancing across Gower over a whole weekend, alongside several other sides. And come see us sometime before then – possibly our next public outing will be back at the Heritage Centre in January, blessing some of the very trees that contributed to our cider! Post by Di Clark Pics by Erin & Claire. Bridgend Town Centre, Saturday 13th September 2025 Today we danced in Bridgend Town Centre, which looked hardly unlikely earlier on due to intense rain showers. The sun came out and we danced to the good people of the Town who stood and watched us. Photos taken by Claire & Alex H. show how it all went. King’s Head, Llangennith Saturday 6th September 2025 The side undertook to dance at an all day charity event being held at the wonderful King’s Head at Llangennith on the far side of Gower. There were about nine dancers and two musicians able to turn out to dance for about 45 minutes on the patio in the front of the pub. Dances done included Lads a Bunchum, Step and Fetch Her, plus a set of Brighton Camp for around half a dozen members of the public who wanted to have a go at Morris dancing! This was a lovely day, and one of the last events of our year (we are in Bridgend on Saturday!). Photos by Alex and Erin. This was the final Thursday evening dance out of our season, and it was a bit of a drive out to Penycae, but certainly a worthwhile trip. The pub is large, boasting an amazing bar complete with around 8 handpumps for ales and ciders. Jemima Pitchfork and Wye Valley ales were on tap, plus several ciders. This pub is also an excellent eating venue and it boasts a campsite too. The side started dancing around 7:50pm performing to a small group of watchers that included the injured archivist Paul Tarrant who was visiting the pub with caving friends who were saying Farewell to a friend, leaving the area for the fleshpots of Manchester. Both Paul and Claire took some photos before the evening got too dark. It looked like Hunt the Squirrel was done plus a whole load of others! When it got too dark, people came in to the pub to enjoy the beer, cider and have a chat. Maybe we should dance at this pub one Saturday as it is a good one! rev James & Loughor Boat clubWe were able to dance out at these two splendid places on Thursday evening when it was bright & sunny. We started at the Reverend James and had a small appreciative crowd of 20+ people watching us from the pub or from homes just across the road. The nights are most definitely drawing in swiftly now, so we managed to get to the Llwchwr boat club before sunset and gave a good account of ourselves before the sun eventually dipped below the horizon and giving a marvellous sunset. There were plenty of people watching us here. It was good to see that we could get a side out despite some being on holiday and others suffering from a summer flu bug that is doing the rounds and laid two low with the sniffles! Big Thanks to Claire Musselwhite for the photos that give a good account of what we did. A small team of 8+1 recovering dancer+1 musician were mustered for our dance out at Oystermouth. The weather did not live up to the earlier forecast of wall to wall sunshine, but at least it wasn’t raining like it did earlier in the day! We were blessed with good weather for our visit to The Britannia Inn. Llanmadoc is our ancestral home as we started as a Morris side there back in 1966 and so it’s always lovely to return there. Sweyn’s Ey journeyed east of our usual haunts and visited Cwmafan. Once again a few of our regular, reliable members were busy elsewhere but we still managed to field 8 dancers (Alex D, Alex H, Alison, Ben, Claire, Di, Keith and Nige). Siân, Kev and Roger provided the music. Alison Bayliss, Morwen and Rowan also came along to support us. |
AuthorSMost of our blog posts are written by Paul Tarrant (our archivist), with occasional contributions from other members of the side. Each post goes up first on our Facebook page, alongside a lot more photos than we put on the blog. Check out our Facebook page right here if you want to see more! Archives
November 2025
Categories |
RSS Feed
